AFP Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Sunday that negotiations on a massive trade between the European Union and the United States were effectively dead in the water. “The talks with the US have de facto failed because we Europeans of course must not succumb to American demands,” he told public broadcaster ZDF. “Nothing is ...

  Wilmington / AFP US rail operator Amtrak on Friday awarded a $2.0 billion (1.8 billion euros) deal to French manufacturer Alstom to supply new trains for its key Acela service between Washington, New York and Boston. The landmark deal for 28 new passenger trains will boost Amtrak’s speed and capacity along its most heavily used and profitable route, with ...

  Bloomberg Carsten Stendevad is resigning as chief executive officer of ATP, Denmark’s biggest pension fund, in order to move back to the U.S. The $120 billion fund has started a recruitment process to find a replacement, it said on Friday. The 43-year-old is leaving the fund to move back to the U.S. and be close to his wife’s family, ...

  Beirut / AFP Turkish shelling and air strikes killed at least 40 Syrians on Sunday, a monitor said, in the first significant civilian casualties in Turkey’s intensifying campaign in northern Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the army had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in air strikes as part of its unprecedented operation inside Syria. The bombardments came after Ankara ...

  Abuja / AFP Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau is “wounded”, in his first comments on military claims that the extremist leader was injured in an attack. Nigeria’s armed forces said on Tuesday that Shekau had been wounded in an air strike on Boko Haram’s forest stronghold, but released no further statement ...

  Cairo / AFP Egyptian authorities on Sunday released a renowned human rights lawyer arrested after protests against President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s decision to hand over two islands to Saudi Arabia. Malek Adly had been held in pre-trial detention since being arrested by plainclothes police on May 5. His defence team confirmed his release. “The case has not been referred ...

  Riyadh /AFP Yemen’s exiled government has said it welcomes in principle a US-backed plan to resume peace talks with Iran-backed rebels on the basis of forming a unity government. At a meeting in Riyadh, the cabinet gave an “initial welcoming to the ideas that came out of the meeting in Jeddah,” which included US Secretary of State John Kerry, ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany expects up to 300,000 asylum seekers to arrive this year, less than one-third of the total during 2015’s record influx, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF) said on Sunday. BAMF chief Frank-Juergen Weise told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that Germany’s healthy economy and improvements to refugee services meant that the country was ...

  Yangon / AFP Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi faces what could be the toughest test of her leadership yet when she opens a major ethnic peace conference Wednesday aimed at ending wars that have blighted the country since its independence. The five-day talks will bring hundreds of ethnic minority rebel leaders to the capital, along with military top brass ...

  Bloomberg Bahrain Islamic Bank BSC (BISB) is seeking to sell about 82 million dinars ($218 million) of unproductive assets such as land and shares as part of a five-year plan to boost growth. The lender sold 14 million dinars-worth of these assets in the first half and plans the sale of a similar amount in the remainder of the ...